Since becoming Leading News Correspondent for Casual Soapbox, I was recently forced to admit I have never actually done an interview. After hanging my head in shame for more than ten seconds, I defiantly promised myself and the Almighty that I would conduct an interview with a famous historian, regardless of the inevitably horrific consequences. So, after waging an unsuccessful campaign of kidnapping and blackmailing various moderately unknown television news personalities, I finally settled on the one historian I know personally, Dr. Nigel Augustus Cranston, a contributing member of Blowhard International Press Syndicate and nightly regular of several Austin microbreweries, whose most recent work, entitled
Deconstructing Perfection: Post-Deconstructionist Dialectic Theory in the Works of Moi, is a celebration of his own previous works. Without further ado, here is my interview.
Casual Soapbox: Dr. Cranston, in your book, you referred to history as "the leading cause of more history". What did you mean by that?
Famous Historian: Well, when we examine the current dynamic, namely that history constructs, in a sense, the status quo, it becomes utterly obvious that this status quo will finally be caterogorized as 'more history.' That is, of course, if the French have nothing to do with it. (Rule Britannia.) If we look towards deconstruction, we see a 2000 pound silverback mountain gorilla with foul breath and a sexual apetite unseen since 1970s era B movies breathing down the back, so to speak, of history. It is history's job, I think, to outrun it, to create more history which can, in turn, employ more historians who will talk about literary theory as history. Ergo 'Look at derrida and what he said about late capitalist society and his personal debt to failed marxism' and not the other way round, meaning, I think, eschewing history in favor of theory. Or maybe it's all a load of sweaty donkey bollocks. Come to speak of it, where am I? I mean, where was I. Oh! Yes, I suppose I am now history. And so forth.
Casual Soapbox: A most welcome perspective on the reasons underlying the necessity of employing more historians I say! Now, in an attempt to humanize the primary subject of your book, which is of course yourself, you also share some very fond memories of various tragedies that affected you growing up during the time period you refer to as "history". Can you talk a little about the sense of despair and loathing for all things that you laud so emphatically in your book, and in particular how these strong emotions serve to make history more entertaining for historians like yourself to study?
Famous Historian: Well, I grew to adulthood in a Carthaginian salt mine, and was finally awarded a scholarship to attend oxford....a most advantageous escape mechanism, if I might add. Before my tenure in the salt mine, I was involved in a slave uprising which covered most of the....wait....that was not my history.....I...um...read that somewhere. I am actually from Twichenham, London, but I grew up in a Turkish prison (my parents were opium smugglers out of Istanbul with liasons in the East End.) So, that was in a sense how I afforded Oxford. As I recount such tales of hardship, water torture, ritual scarification, gorilla sodomy, and other triubulations, I insert possible historiographical figurations of how we might contextualize these events within a larger body of work, namely, history.
Famous Historian: History, in all senses, is finally "his story", the story of the historian, though the better "his story"s are based on things we call 'facts,' shunted through a process called 'analysis.' We only can read the breadth of our own life, so to speak.
Casual Soapbox: A more experienced or female news correspondent might take issue with your definition of "
his"story, but, luckily for you, this correspondent is consisitently and intentionally insensitive to all gender related conflicts, for reasons that might be obvious. I must, however, take issue with your blatant plagiarism of my life story. I talked quite extensively about my own scholarship at Trackside Peoria Community College from the Carthaginian Slave Reparatory Scholarship Fund, maintained by the Italian government, in my collection of personal essays,
Pure Treacle. Never wear sandals to a salt mine, by the way. Perhaps I should ask you pointedly about the penchant for famous historians, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen Ambrose, and yourself, to pilfer the work of others, willy-nilly, and then apologize unconvincingly about it on the blue moon when someone actually reads your work. How about it good sir? How about it?
Famous Historian: I would now like to challenge you to a mumbly peg competition, which, if you are an historian...or certainly a former Carthaginian slave, you should be quite familiar with. In fact, I think it is the only way I shall achieve satisfaction. So what if I read that book and it became my own life....I have a medical condition called 'Cautioned Placement,' the symptoms of which involve me not only projecting myself into stories and accounts, but into history itself, thence becoming part of it. But I digress.....mumbly peg is all that can remain after such an assault!
Casual Soapbox: Whoa...uh... looks like we're out of time, and... Well, strike that. My producer and trained (
although apparently not. quite. so. well. as. I'd. thought.) monkey Bobo is telling me that we have time for one last question. But definitely, absolutely no time whatsoever, under the sun, for any "game" involving either mumblies or pegs, which, by the way, sounds quite improper. And I suppose in our blame-casting society of victims, we can excuse any manner of intellectual sloth, or what have you, simply by referring to it as a "condition" or an "addiction" or an "alien mind-control technology". So, que sera sera, and on we go. Anyway. Ahem. One last question. You read my book? Er, no wait. That isn't my question. This is my question: In a time such as this, a time of pure and consummate nihilism, a time when there is no overriding social directive instructing us for what ends it is proper or even desirable to strive, what does it all mean? What's on next week's episode of history for God, the universe, mankind and the other bits?
Famous Historian: I would propose that one could come to a clearer understanding of what it is all about via said mumbly peg competition. If, as Einstein says, God plays dice with the universe, then perhaps God plays mumbly peg as well. And we would be most prudent to move quickly in such a situation, if we value our bollocks. For perhaps God cheats at Mumbly Peg. Ask Bobo. He cheats. And by the way, you refrained from informing me that Bobo was running the interview. Now your true intentions surface. So it is not to be mumbly peg, but gorilla fun of a Biblical nature. In that case, I plan to exit from the...... .[
Exit, pursued by a silverback mountain gorilla]
(
This interview was terminated by a gorilla attack. Authorities are investigating the whereabouts of Cranston, but have no leads.)
Final thoughts ( a la Jerry Springer ):
Casual Soapbox: I end more conversations that way... Well, after what must surely be described as the most important interview ever, I can only say that I, abramcf, Leading News Correspondent for Casual Soapbox, have produced the single most ground-breaking piece of journalism ever (throughout history) forged in the creative fires of this website. And it only took five months to complete. Although he misquoted Einstein -- God does
not play dice with the universe,
said Einstein,
does not --called Bobo a cheater, and threatened repeatedly and quite viciously to mumble my peg, it was obvious Dr. Nigel Augustus Cranston was one of the great minds of the century, and it has been my great pleasure to flatter him obsequiously and indulge his delusions of grandeur. We and the Austin Microbreweries Association hope he yet lives.
Essential Note: The above interview is fictional and did not actually occur. Any resemblance of Dr. Cranston, Bobo, or the silverback mountain gorilla to real persons is purely coincidental and can be properly blamed on a vast left-wing conspiracy. This interview was co-written by me and a friend who shall at this time remain nameless, but wishes anonymous credit.
